


This Is the Last Time

by celeste9



Series: this is a bad idea (but screw it) [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Age Difference, Angst, Break Up, F/M, Missing Scene, Older Woman/Younger Man, Power Imbalance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-20
Updated: 2017-10-20
Packaged: 2019-01-20 11:35:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12431997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celeste9/pseuds/celeste9
Summary: Leia can’t be both a general and a lover to him. She has failed at both.





	This Is the Last Time

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Lana Del Rey.

“Incoming transmission for you, General, on one of the secure lines,” Kaydel says. “From Kes Dameron.”

Leia closes her eyes briefly, the pounding in her head seeming to worsen tangentially. She had hoped to delay the delivery of bad news until she knew how to say it, how to tell Kes Dameron that his son was almost certainly dead by now, killed on a First Order Star Destroyer as a direct result of his duty here.

Because Leia sent him on a dangerous mission of the sort he had never signed up for, and because Poe always, always said yes.

“Patch it through to my console, Kaydel,” Leia says, and sits down.

The message is text only, and Leia is unaccountably grateful.

 _Leia,_ it reads, _Poe is here with me. He’s safe. He looks terrible but he’s insisting he needs to get back so you’ll see him soon. Right now I’m just relieved he’s okay but you can expect to be hearing some words from me soon. A kriffing spy mission, what were you thinking? -Kes_

Leia’s hand is hovering over her heart and she is glad she is seated because she can feel her legs trembling beneath her. _Data retrieval,_ she thinks, _it was technically rather simple._

Simple aside from the desperate circumstances, and the enemy gunning for the same data, and the –

Then she thinks, _Poe is alive. I didn’t kill him._

Oh, Force. She didn’t kill him.

Leia has sent far too many good people to their deaths and far too many have died in her name, or in the name of the cause she fights for. She can recite a list and she can see their faces in her head.

Few, though, few carry the same degree of regret that Poe had. Regret for her poor choices, for his youth, for the way she had taken advantage of his loyalty and his affection.

Knowing that his name will no longer be on that list is the best piece of good news she has had in far too long.

-

Poe looks a wreck when he enters the command center, drawn and exhausted, his face sunburned, cuts and bruising on his cheek, his lip, his temple. He is clean, though, in different clothes than he was wearing when he left, and Leia is glad that Kes seems to have gotten him to shower at least before he flew back.

“General,” he says, coming towards her, and Leia is glad of the way her mother taught her to keep her emotions from her face when she needs to.

“Well,” she says. “You’ve looked better, Dameron.”

“Felt better, too,” he admits, and there is that rueful, sheepish smile she knows, as he runs his hand through his hair.

“My office,” Leia says, because she needs to do this in private.

He follows her, and he stays standing in front of her desk as she sits behind it.

Leia waves him down. “Sit before you fall over.”

“It’s not that bad,” Poe insists, though he sits and seems grateful about it. “Beebee?” he says. “I gave the map to Beebee, and I--”

“We know. We’re working on locating him.”

“It was such a cock-up, General, I’m sorry.”

“I know the First Order met you on Jakku, Poe. I’m not sure what you think you could have done better.”

Poe winces. “I’m sorry. They interrogated me and I tried, but Ren came and he--” His breath hitches. “I’m sorry, but it hurt, and he just… he just took it, I couldn’t fight it. I’m sorry.” He won’t stop apologizing, his eyes haunted and his hands trembling in his lap.

Leia isn’t certain if she should send him to the infirmary or to a therapist. She has a fierce urge to go to him and hold him but she knows she shouldn’t. It isn’t her place, to give him comfort in that way. Whatever has been between them, it… She isn’t his mother and she cannot be his lover. This has to end. It is ended.

She can’t be both a general and a lover to him. She has failed at both.

She sent him into a situation he was unprepared for, delivered him into the arms of the son she lost, to be interrogated, to be hurt, to be tortured, for the information she sent him to find.

“I’m not sure what you think anyone could have done in that position,” Leia says. She hopes her voice doesn’t sound as quivery as it feels to her; all she is thinking is, _Ben, Ben, Ben, how could you, what have you become, how_ _did I fail you so absolutely?_

“I didn’t know he could do that,” Poe says, and he is holding his hands together as if that will make them stop shaking. “Ren. I’ve heard the stories but… He stopped my blaster bolts in the air and just _held_ them there while he had a conversation, like it was nothing, and he… he went in my head and read me like a book.”

 _Ben used to do that,_ Leia thinks. _Don’t you remember? I used to chastise him for going where he wasn’t welcome. He could barely control it._

 _He doesn’t know,_ she realizes. Poe doesn’t know Kylo Ren is Ben.

Or he has convinced himself he doesn’t know.

He must have heard the rumors. Leia would be very much surprised if he has not, particularly in light of his relation to her family, his awareness of Ben’s disappearance. Does he believe Ben is dead? Many do. Can he simply not accept that the boy who followed him around like a puppy, the boy he maybe – probably –

Now would be the time to tell him. He deserves to know.

But Leia cannot make herself. She doesn’t know if it’s for him or for herself but she cannot say it.

“How did you escape?” she asks.

“Luck,” Poe says, and he seems almost grateful for the redirect away from Kylo Ren. “This stormtrooper, he helped me. He wanted to get out so he helped me steal a TIE fighter and we escaped together.”

Leia frowns. “A stormtrooper? That shouldn’t be possible. Stormtroopers are conditioned to be obedient, to minimize-- if not eliminate-- their capacity for independent thought and feeling.”

“I don’t know about that but this one, he was different. He saved my life.”

 _He saved my life,_ Leia hears in her head, and she thinks, _he could be dead, he should be dead, but he isn’t. He isn’t. I haven’t killed him._

“And then what?” She keeps her tone carefully even. Her mother would be proud.

“Got hit. Crashed. I think… I think he must have died. I lost him, anyway, and…” Poe runs a shaky hand through his hair. “I should have done more for him. Should’ve looked.”

Poe looks genuinely mournful and Leia realizes that this mystery stormtrooper who should have been impossible truly made an impression on him.

Leia owes this stranger a good deal. She is sorry, too.

“Your ship crashed,” she prods. “So how did you get off Jakku?”

“Found another ship.”

Leia rolls her eyes. “I think I’m missing a story there.”

“You know me, General,” Poe says with a familiar easy smile. “I’m always making friends.”

“That’s obvious. First a stormtrooper, then--”

There is a knock at the door. “Enter,” Leia says.

It is Major Brance. “General, I’m sorry to interrupt but the droid is on Takodana.”

“Beebee?” Poe exclaims. “We found him?”

Taslin nods. “It’s been confirmed by Threepio’s agent in Maz Kanata’s castle. Beebee-Ate was seen in the company of--” He hesitates.

“Of?” Leia urges.

“Of Han Solo, ma’am.”

Her eyes slide to Poe. Poe seems without words, for once.

“Of course, the droid could be mistaken,” Taslin tries.

“It doesn’t matter,” Leia says, because that is a problem for later. “We need to retrieve Commander Dameron’s droid. Is there First Order presence?”

“Our intelligence suggests they may already be on their way.”

“Then we’ll send fighters in. Blue Team, Red Team. Have the captains prepare their squadrons.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Taslin says, and exits.

He is barely gone before Poe says what Leia knew he would say. “I’m going to Takodana.”

“Poe, you should be in an infirmary bed under care of Doctor Kalonia.”

“It’s my mess,” Poe insists. “You have to let me do something to fix it.”

Arguing is pointless. Leia will not convince him. She could order him to stay behind, but honestly, she is more concerned about what that would do to him than the risk of allowing him to leave.

And if they do meet opposition, Poe is the best pilot they have. They must not – cannot – fail.

“I will allow it,” she says, watching the dawning gratitude and relief on Poe’s face, “only if you will see Doctor Kalonia first.”

Poe nods. “Yes, General. Thank you, General.”

Leia stands, and so does Poe. There is work to be done.

She wants to say - to explain - but words are failing her and she doesn’t know what she wants.

He is _alive._

“Can I… Please, General, please, just…” And Poe comes around the desk to wrap his arms around her, burying his face in her neck. He clings to her like Ben used to as a boy after his nightmares, before he started to pull away, and Leia can only stand there stiffly and wish, kriff, wish things were different. He is sturdy and warm and Leia wants to bring him into her bed, wants to have him, hold him, feel him, and she can’t, she can’t.

She can’t.

She lets herself hold him for just a moment and she tells herself it’s for him, it’s because he needs to feel someone with him. It is the least she can do for him after everything and she tells herself it has nothing to do with what she herself might want.

“This has to end,” she says. “It’s over.”

Slowly Poe draws back. “I’ve been told I give good hugs,” he says, “but if it’s not your thing…”

He looks at her and she knows he knows what she means. She can read the hurt and the inevitability, the resigned acceptance, all over his face.

Poe steps back from her. He says, “I get it. I failed. It was the most important thing you ever asked me to do and I fucked it up spectacularly. I let you down.”

“You think this is because--” Leia swallows. “Poe, I put you in a position I never should have. I’ve taken advantage and that is unacceptable. This is over because I was wrong. Not because of you.”

His face is doing something strange that Leia can’t entirely decipher. “General, with respect, I never did anything because we were fucking. If you’re done with me, it changes nothing. All it means is I’m gonna be spending more time in my empty bed.”

 _Without me,_ Leia thinks, _perhaps you can find someone to fill it that can actually stay._

“It was an untenable position,” she says.

A shadow of something like regret flickers over Poe’s face. “If I ever made things more difficult for you, General, then I am sorry. I thought I was… helping. I thought we had fun? But I never wanted to add to your stresses and I’m sorry.”

“I’m not sorry,” Leia says, closing the distance between them again, allowing herself to touch her hand to his cheek, “and I wish you wouldn’t be, either. It simply has to end.”

 _I used you,_ she thinks, _and I sent you to die. I know you will never see it that way and maybe that’s part of the problem._

“I get it,” Poe says, though Leia isn’t sure he does. He only sounds sad. He raises his hand to hers, pressed to his cheek, so he can slide it over to his lips to kiss.

Leia draws her hand back. She isn’t sure why this is so difficult.

It is for the best, for both of them, and neither of them is in love.

But it is hard.

“Infirmary,” Leia says, before she loses her resolve.

Poe nods, the tiniest of smiles playing about his mouth, as though even now he can find something in her attitude to bemuse him. When he moves past her to the door he says, “Thank you, for… for…” He stops and swallows. “It will be an honor to continue to serve you, however I may.”

“Thank you, Poe,” Leia says, and watches him go.

The door slides closed and Leia wants to crawl into her bed. She feels like she should earn something for this, for saying no to that pretty, pretty boy, so eager to please.

She wonders when she will earn _something._

There is a buzz of noise outside her door, Resistance staff preparing for what is to come. A fight is inevitable, and they must win. They must recover the droid, and the map.

And her brother.

Leia cannot stay here, and she cannot crawl into her bed - her empty, cold bed, because she has made it that way, because it will be better for the Resistance, for Poe, and maybe, eventually, for her. She will miss the comfort Poe provided and the way he looked at her but it was a complication she will be better off without.

She is the general and there is work to be done.

There always is.

**_End_ **


End file.
